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The U.S.-led coalition fighting ISIS says it carried out an airstrike on a hospital complex in the Iraqi city of Mosul at the request of Iraq's military. Air Force Col. John L. Dorrian, the spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, told reporters that the coalition did not "have any reason to believe civilians were harmed." However, when specifically asked whether there were patients at the city's main hospital, Dorrian said that was "very difficult to ascertain with full and total fidelity."...

For the first Somali-American lawmaker in the U.S., it was meant to be a day to remember: a visit to the White House for policy meetings before she takes office in Minnesota. But as she left the seat of U.S. power, Ilhan Omar says, she was subjected to a hateful and threatening verbal attack in a cab. "I pray for his humanity and for all those who harbor hate in their hearts," Omar, a Muslim who wears a head scarf, wrote of the cab driver who she says assailed her. In a Facebook post , she...

Two juveniles have been arrested and charged with arson for allegedly starting the fire that killed at least 14 people in east Tennessee last month. They might be tried as adults, and authorities say there might be more arrests. Prosecutors say the two minors started a fire on Nov. 23, according to a statement from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation . Feeding off a drought-stricken forest, the Chimney Tops 2 fire grew inside the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. On Nov. 28, it swept...

A dad in Mexico who planned an epic party for his daughter Rubi's 15th birthday. He made a video talking about the festivities - three bands, a horse race and at the end, he said, "everyone is cordially invited!" The video went viral and more than a million people said they would come to Rubi's party. It spawned all kinds of internet memes. Rubi's favorite? The one about Donald Trump allowing undocumented Mexican migrants in the U.S. to return to Mexico so they can go to her party. Copyright...

There are plenty of recent stories involving white police officers who have shot and killed black men, including some who are on trial for those shootings. Then there's the case of a white cop who did not shoot a black man holding a gun — and it may have cost him his job. It started with a 911 call for help in Weirton, W.Va., on May 6 at 2:51 a.m. An emergency dispatcher in turn put out a call for an officer. "Had a female stating they needed someone right now. She sounded...

Diana Kennedy, often called the "Julia Child of Mexico," is a woman of strong preferences. She loves good butter and cream, Seville orange marmalade, black truffle shavings and escamoles (a caviar that comes from ant eggs). She hates the use of cassia (false cinnamon) in place of the real thing, canola oil, low- or non-fat dairy products, and nonstick pans. And don't get her started on kosher salt, which despite being the "beloved salt of virtually all American chefs," as she writes in

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid will give his farewell address Thursday on the Senate floor. The Nevada Democrat has served in Congress for 30 years, and as his party's leader in the Senate for 12. Reid tells Morning Edition's Rachel Martin that he — and many other Americans — are still anxious about the incoming Trump administration, but he sees reasons for optimism as well. "I've learned to accept the Trump election," he says. Interview Highlights On...

One of the fundamental ways scientists measure the well-being of a nation is tracking the rate at which its citizens die and how long they can be expected to live. So the news out of the federal government Thursday is disturbing: The overall U.S. death rate has increased for the first time in a decade, according to an analysis of the latest data. And that led to a drop in overall life expectancy for the first time since 1993, particularly among people younger than 65. "This is a big deal,"...

Fake news played a bigger role in this past presidential election than ever seen before. And sometimes it has had serious repercussions for real people and businesses. That's what happened to a pizzeria in Washington, D.C., recently, when an armed man claiming to be "self-investigating" a fake news story entered the restaurant and fired off several rounds. But once a fake news story is out there, and the harm has been done, what can a person do about it? Derigan Silver, a professor of media,...

Smoke hung in the air for days in Oakland's largely Latino Fruitvale district after a deadly fire broke out late Friday night in an artists' warehouse, leaving 36 people dead . Like so much of the city, it's a neighborhood facing ripples of gentrification created by the tech boom in the Bay Area, which now has some of the highest rents in the country. Carmen Brito lived in the now destroyed warehouse known as the Ghost Ship. She barely got out with her life. "You can go three blocks, and you...

President-elect Donald Trump's phone call with the president of Taiwan last week, initially characterized by Trump transition staffers and Taipei officials as just a small courtesy, has emerged as part of a lobbying strategy by a quintessential Washington insider. Former Sen. Bob Dole, a war hero, lion of the Senate and 1996 Republican nominee for president, was an early supporter of Donald Trump, even when other Republican leaders were still wary. Dole explained his reasons on NPR's Morning...

Royal Dutch Shell has signed a provisional agreement to develop oil and gas fields in Iran, a move that could signal energy companies will not be deterred from doing business with the Islamic Republic despite uncertainty whether a Trump administration will scrap a nuclear deal agreed to by world powers. A spokesman for Shell said a memorandum of agreement was signed Wednesday with the National Iranian Oil Co. "to further explore areas of potential cooperation." The agreement is nonbinding and...

The 21st Century Cures Act that gained congressional approval on Wednesday has been championed as a way to speed up drug development, but it's also the most significant piece of mental health legislation since the 2008 law requiring equal insurance coverage for mental and physical health. The bill includes provisions aimed at fighting the opioid epidemic, strengthens laws mandating parity for mental and physical health care and includes grants to increase the number of psychologists and...

This post was updated at 5:12 p.m. ET Linda McMahon, the co-founder of the pro-wrestling enterprise World Wrestling Entertainment, was selected Wednesday by President-elect Donald Trump to head the Small Business Administration. In a statement released by the Trump transition team, Trump called McMahon "one of the country's top female executives" and said she would help push his "America First" agenda forward. He added: "She helped grow WWE from a modest 13-person...

Marking the day in 1941 that thrust the U.S. into World War II, Americans are honoring veterans and remembering those who lost their lives in Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. We're also remembering how the nation responded to what President Franklin Roosevelt called a "date which will live in infamy." "The Pearl Harbor Survivors Association once had 18,000 members," Wayne Yoshioka from Hawaii Public Radio reports for Morning Edition . "It was disbanded in 2011, when membership was down to 2...

As I write this I have 42 Internet tabs open, across four browsers, and I feel completely at ease. Apparently, I'm not alone. A new Pew Research Center study found that most Americans are not overloaded by information, or at least, they don't feel they are. In April, Pew surveyed 1,520 Americans 18 and older. According to the study, 20 percent of Americans feel overloaded by information — down from 27 percent a decade ago. In fact, three-quarters of Americans like having a lot of information...

In Bangladesh, a new report finds, impoverished children are working long hours in violation of that country's labor laws. Children under the age of 14 who've given up school for jobs are toiling an average 64 hours a week, according to a British think tank. Researchers from the London-based Overseas Development Institute surveyed nearly 3,000 households in the slums of the capital Dhaka. They found children as young as 6 employed full-time and others working up to 100 to 110 hours a week. On...

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/. AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: Before the election, candidate Trump called school choice the new civil rights issue of our time, and his signature education proposal is a $20 billion school voucher plan. Again, traditional vouchers let parents use public money to pay for private schools, including religious schools. Now, for more on this, I'm joined by another member of the NPR Ed team, Cory Turner. Welcome to the studio. CORY TURNER, BYLINE:...

President-elect Donald Trump intends to nominate Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency, announcing his decision in a statement Thursday. As attorney general, Pruitt has made no secret of his disdain for the EPA. His official biography calls him "a leading advocate against the EPA's activist agenda." He has repeatedly challenged the agency's rules in court, and he has even sued the EPA for an allegedly cozy "sue and settle"...

The unofficial motto of a public charter school co-founded by Betsy DeVos — President-elect Trump's choice to lead the Department of Education — could be "No Pilot Left Behind." Nearby a small maintenance hangar that's part of the West Michigan Aviation Academy , one of the school's two Cessna 172 airplanes chugs down the tarmac of Gerald R. Ford International Airport. The school is based on the airport's grounds, just outside Grand Rapids. Besty DeVos and her...

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/. ARI SHAPIRO, HOST: The Senate gathered this afternoon to say goodbye to Vice President Joe Biden. Biden has been a presence there for more than 40 years. And NPR's Scott Detrow says it was a rare bipartisan moment in an increasingly partisan Capitol. SCOTT DETROW, BYLINE: By now, Joe Biden's Senate story is pretty well-known. He was elected in 1972. He need to be 30 to serve in the Senate, as minority leader Harry Reid pointed out in...

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/. AUDIE CORNISH, HOST: This year, millions of people from northern England to American Midwest voted against globalization, but as the English city of Sunderland recently experienced, voting against free trade comes with risks. After Sunderland went for Brexit last summer, the city's biggest private employer, Nissan, threatened to stop investing there. NPR's Frank Langfitt has the story. FRANK LANGFITT, BYLINE: This was the scene in...

Older women who look on the bright side of life were less likely to die in the next several years than their peers who weren't as positive about the future. The research, published Wednesday in the American Journal of Epidemiology , is the latest to find an association between a positive sense of well-being and better health, though it's not yet clear whether one causes the other. In this study, researchers used data from 70,021 women who were part of the long-running Nurses' Health...

When AT&T, a leading Internet provider, proposed a massive merger with Time Warner, a huge media conglomerate, the question many people asked was: Will I have to pay more for my TV? On Wednesday, members of the Senate Judiciary Committee quizzed the CEOs of the two companies — over and over posing basically the same question: What will the $85.4 billion merger mean for the prices that consumers may have to pay? AT&T is the second-largest wireless Internet provider and one of the largest...

The sweet aroma of cookies baking wafts through the kitchen as the kids trample in and plead, "When are they gonna be ready ?" Smile and reply softly, "Soon. But these are for the company, dear hearts." And these cookies will still be there when your guests arrive, because the kids will taste them and move onto the chocolate chips and frosted Santas. With twinges of flavors like anise, cardamom, basil, liqueur and coffee, these treats definitely appeal to grown-up taste...

The death toll from a disastrous warehouse fire in Oakland, Calif., stands at 36 after authorities have ended recovery efforts, officials say. Firefighters and investigators have been searching the site for days, since the artists' collective known as the "Ghost Ship" burned down late Friday night, during a dance party. They briefly halted efforts when a wall was discovered to be leaning, calling in structural engineers to ensure the safety of recovery workers. The end of recovery efforts...

The Senate is expected to vote this afternoon on the 21st Century Cures Act. It is considered landmark legislation that would provide funding for research programs like Vice President Joe Biden’s moonshot against cancer. It will also make significant changes in how drugs are tested and approved. The act passed in the House overwhelmingly and is expected to easily pass the Senate as well. NPRs Richard Harris ( @rrichardh ) joins Here & Now s Jeremy Hobson to...

The tragic warehouse fire in Oakland, Calif., is raising fears of a backlash against the citys artists and the way many of them live and work. If the city decides to red-tag buildings that dont have permits, artists could lose their homes and studio spaces. Stephanie Martin Taylor ( @SMartinTaylor ) from Here & Now contributor KQED reports. Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

Even before the election, critics had been drawing comparisons between Donald Trump and Adolf Hitler. Theyve pointed to Trumps promise to ban Muslims, deport millions of immigrants, crack down on the press and make America great again. Here & Now s Jeremy Hobson talks with Daniel Ziblatt ( @dziblatt ), professor of government at Harvard University and author of the forthcoming book Conservative Parties and the Birth of Modern Democracy in Europe , about Hitlers...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhdymoRTz6M The Weather Channel has a message for the website Breitbart: "Earth Is Not Cooling, Climate Change Is Real and Please Stop Using Our Video to Mislead Americans" That's the title under which The Weather Channel published an article on Tuesday , after Breitbart used the cable news channel's coverage in a factually incorrect story about climate change. The article addressed Breitbart's misleading use of a Nov. 3 Weather Channel video in which forecaster...